This post was published long before the Mists of Pandara Expansion.
The tips and techniques explained here may be outdated.

Curses!

So a few days ago I was questing in Felwood.. and everyone else was there too. The area was overrun with players. I saw a mob pop. I sent my pet. A shaman saw where my pet was going and used an instant direct damage spell to tag my mob. Ok.. Fine. He got there first. A few seconds later another mob popped. I sent my pet.. same shaman tagged my mob again.

I . was . pissed. Dots won’t tag the mob to me. I can’t make my pet go faster. All my other spells have a cast time. I was just pissed. So.. um… well I put Curse of Recklessness on his mob (mob can’t be feared and now hits harder). I know it’s kind of petty.. but he was being an ass. Does it make me a good warlock or a bad warlock?**
This situation made me consider two things.. how to tag mobs faster (without dragging them down on myself) and how better to use my curses. So far Lilac has mostly used Curse of Agony (for the damage), Curse of Exhaustion (for the kiting) and Curse of Shadows (for the improved CC/pet threat). That’s leaving a lot of other curses out. I feel the need to explore them and figure out their usefullness.

Curse of Weakness – Reduces attack power by XX for 120 seconds.
I suppose when facing a terribly hard-hitting mob this would be useful. This would reduce damage to my tank (whether it’s the voidy or an -actual- tank). I wonder how much threat this causes. If I’m in a group with an -actual- tank is it worthwhile to put Curse of Weakness on mob #2+ that’s hitting the tank? It’s not a dot so it won’t inhibit CC but it does modify the damage from the mob. Hmmm.

Curse of Recklessness – Increase targets attack power by XX but decrease Armor by YY. Cursed enemies will not flee, and cannot be Feared. Lasts 120 seconds.
I’ve used this as mentioned above (ahem) and for yo-yoing feared targets. Are there other uses?

Curse of Tongues – Increase casting time by 50% (60%). Lasts 30 seconds.
This has such a short duration.. I can see how making them take longer to cast is good.. they get to cast less spells before I kill them.. but other than that.. eeh.

Curse of the Elements – Reduce Fire Resistance and Frost Resistance by XX. Increases Fire and Frost damage by XX. Lasts 120 seconds.
Curse of Shadow – Reduce Shadow Resistance and Arcane Resistance by XX and increasing Shadow and Arcane spell damage by XX. Lasts 120 seconds.
I’ve used CoS to help my Banish to stick on the mob when initiall cast.. and on mobs that are Shadow resistant to help my voidy’s taunts to stick better. I also used it in Dire Maul to increase the damage/hit ratio from me, the shadow priest and the mage. I suppose if I were in a group with a lot of mages then CoEle would be useful. Anything else?

Would CoEle help Sheep to stick? How about Ice Trap? What school of magic do those come from?

Curse of Doom – Causes 3200 Shadow damage after 60 seconds. If the target dies from this damage, there is a chance of a Doomguard being summoned.
I’ve heard this is what you use when DPSing in a raid if you have another warlock to do CoEle. Hmm.

If I’m in a group.. and there’s a hunter who’s going to pull his mob into an ice trap.. is there a curse I can put on that mob that will decrease the chance of the mob resisting the ice trap? If the mob breaks loose before the hunter’s cooldown is ready.. and before the group is ready to pick up the mob, should I put Curse of Weakness on the mob?

**You know.. every time I type “good warlock or bad warlock” I hear the voice of Galinda the good witch of the North in the back of my head.

Readers who viewed this page, also viewed:

16 comments to Curses!

You know, this is one thing that really ticks me off about other players. Usually when I am faced with this situation I will either leave and come back later, or try and work together to make it more fare. People who purposefully take your mob, is bad form and deserve whatever curse’s you put on them…

While Algorython does not approve of this demonic abomination, Bubon, my 61 warlock thinks you used your powers for awesome.

Bubon’s Demon/Aff, so he pulls by having the felguard intercept the mob. Bubon loves his felguard, deep down in his twisted little black heart.

I never remember to do the Fear/Reckless yo yo, but, fortunately, the felguard is smart enough to intercept mobs that run too far away. It’s not always enough to save me from meeting 5 of his closest friends, but it does help.

As a Shammy, I probably wouldn’t have cared much about your curse, sorry. Obviously you shouldn’t worry about being good/bad when you’re playing with jerks like that. All’s fair, I say. I have dabbled with a warlock up to the mid-20s and my recommendation would be to wand the mob as you send your pet. By the time the mob gets near you the pet should be able to aggro it off you. The wand is fast, but I dunno from curses so you’ll have to ask a more experienced Lock than I was.

As for people acting like jerks… well, I had a totally groovy experience doing an escort quest that comes out of Northwatch Hold. This other Troll hunter & I, both in our low 20s, were trying to get the prisoner from the Hold back to Ratchet. Not too tough for us, but you know how slow he walks so it’s a pain and it takes like half an hour. Anyway, I saw this Dranaei come down the coast on a Halloween broomstick (this was just a few days after Christmas, so that should’ve been my first clue that she was a dork) and hovered, watching us come through a pirate area. She wasn’t flagged, but I did my usual WAVE anyway, which is my way of saying “I’m harmless, please don’t kill me!” (She was “??” to us, so way over our level.) A bunch of pirates attacked us and although we were busy, we handled them well and then all of a sudden, “QUEST FAILED.” I was like, “wtf?” And then I saw the Dranaei wench speeding away from our escort’s corpse on her dorky broomstick. She’d offed him and then buggered off. I play on an RP server so I’m not used to this kind of behavior, but I thought it was a really cheap, cowardly thing to do anyway. Especially since she ran away and didn’t even give us the chance to go after her.

If he was being a jerk, I think you’re fine with having him take a little more damage. What I hate is when I’m our farming elementals and the warlock decides that he should banish my target, when I was pretty much minding my own business, and it was my target anyway. Now that’s being a jerk.

(On a side not… not sure why warlocks can always dot thing like that… I can’t sheep a target if it’s gray to me. /shrug)

When I pull several mobs at once, I have the felguard cleave once or twice to get some aggro on all of them, put normal dots on his main target, and put Weakness on the rest, then proceed as normal on that main target. Lather, rinse, repeat on other targets. The Weakness does reduce the amount of health I have to funnel. Sometimes one of the extras will peel off to attack me, but the FG tends to intercept them, then return to his main target. He generates some threat and stuns them.

If you need an instant tag, you can always use Death Coil. True it’s got a cooldown…but it’s better than losing a mob sometimes. I’m not sure if Drain Life is an insta-tag, but that’s an option too if it is. If you’re fighting in close quarters (and if you can handle the aggro) a goof old Hellfire does the trick too.

As far as dealing with jerks, you can always fear their mob if they’re melee based. You can banish it if that’s an option (although apparently that option may now be gone). If it’s a demon, you could Enslave it and then run it away! heheh. That option may also not work…but I can dream can’t I?

Curse of Weakness does indeed suck. The only thing you’d probably toss it on is a hunter’s pet in pvp. The time you spend putting up weakness on a bunch of mobs hitting you is usually better spent dpsing.

Tongues I’ve mostly used in pvp/arenas/some raid encounters.

Doom > all assuming the mob will survive long enough for it to go off (and that you’re not on cos or coe duty of course).

If I could still chain banish the mobs other jerks that are repeatedly tagging mobs I’ve dotted I so would.

Otherwise, hitting Drain Life should do the trick probably. Have pet pick up mob if necessary (not sure what lvl you are/pet you are using but usually I ended up pulling off my pet anyway).

As far as other uses for curse of shadow, I use it when low on hp(demo/afflic spec) from grinding. Send in the felguard, curse of shadows, drain life drain life drain life. Increases the damage/life returned by about 25-30 at level 64 with fel armor up.

One other trick to use? You succibus’ Seduce is shadow based, so if it is getting broken a lot or resisted, throw CoS on the mob before ( or even durig, no damage) she seduces to ensure it sticks.

I saw someone recommend wands above as a faster alternative, adn thats true, The immolate has an instant damage, plus dot, but its high threat, and does have a cast time, but use rank 1 and you get faster cast and much less threat, then throw your regular Dots on it, if Immolate is in your rotation, just upgrade to the higher rank when you get to it.

Wen you are farming elementals and demons, banish the next one you see before you are ready to attack it. You can guarantee you hit it first, cause you can see the timer count down and know when to cast, or send in pet. I am not sure ( Cause Im not an ass and dont KS ) but I THINK banish counts as a damaging spell for credit purposes, but Id have to check with another player watching to know for sure.

Curse of weakness is useful in raid settings against bosses, because it stacks with the warriors demoralizing shout, in fact, you NEED it on the boss to get the full effect of Demo Shout, but thats about the only time you would use it, and even then its not going to make much of a difference, especially when you are dealing with mobs that hit for 1k+ on plate… that reduction just isnt going to make any difference, but it works great rank one on the fear yo-yo trick recklessness/weakness cause its cheap mana wise.